


'Young Men - Columbus Circle'

by ohwhatevers



Category: Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-30
Updated: 2018-01-30
Packaged: 2019-03-11 13:28:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13525254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohwhatevers/pseuds/ohwhatevers
Summary: "I didn’t think I would see Mr McKee again. The evening we had met gained a feverish tint in my memory, and with what happened between the elevator and the train car the next morning I did not think either of us would seek the other out. My limited experience taught me that such encounters were to be enjoyed, savoured, and then never acknowledged again."





	'Young Men - Columbus Circle'

**Author's Note:**

> this gets a bit rushed as i just wanted it over and done with  
> complaints office [here](http://ohwhatevers.tumblr.com)  
> some links about gay 1920s New York: [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_history_in_New_York) [here](https://www.nycgo.com/articles/nyc-gay-history) [here](http://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/11/nyregion/journey-to-an-overlooked-past.html) [and here](http://www.nyc.gov/html/lpc/downloads/pdf/LGBT-PRIDE_2014.pdf)  
> this is what i was basing the cafe where they meet on: [X](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=new+york+1920s+cafeteria&safe=active&biw=1366&bih=638&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjhqKLp07vSAhXGWBoKHTlDCL4Q_AUIBigB#imgrc=-SurFc0phs4Y2M:) [X](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horn_%26_Hardart)

I didn’t think I would see Mr McKee again. The evening we had met gained a feverish tint in my memory, and with what happened between the elevator and the train car the next morning I did not think either of us would seek the other out. My limited experience taught me that such encounters were to be enjoyed, savoured, and then never acknowledged again. But we met again and what happened between us grew, until it was choked and subsumed by my involvement in that summer’s tragedy.

It was Mr McKee who rang me. His words barely registered as he spoke. I gripped the receiver, staring fixedly on the brass dial, and began speculating frantically whether my finances would withstand a blackmailing. The hallway dust hung suspended; the morning was deathly silent except for the noise of my Finn pottering about but it was filtered through the blood pounding in my ears. I was within and without my own life again but this time through fear and not my foolish romanticising.

I hadn’t thought to hold that night over McKee’s head but he, evidently, had. As a married man, he had an alibi and therefore a secure position in the eyes of society from which to sally forth and hold over me – and possibly do so with violence

Somehow, we agreed to meet for lunch that day and confront each other there. But where would we meet? At his home, with his charming wife there? At mine, with my Finn hovering about and overhearing everything we said – then saying God knows what to others in her incessant Finnish mumbling? He knew of a quiet café in the Village… I suggested a bar in Harlem… We carefully deferred to each other’s opinion on the matter, neither of us wanting to make the final decision, to allow the other the advantage of home turf or the higher ground.

Eventually, a concrete plan was formed. I put the phone down.

The next day as I prepared to leave my little home, something heavy and hard settled in my stomach and, passing the hallway mirror, the man who gazed out at me had an odd look in his eye. He knew he was stepping into another world, one that lived side by side with this one, just visible but always in the shadows, never understood. He might not return. He straightened his jacket, smoothed his hair, and I left the house. The door handle squeaked as I turned it. I always meant to get it fixed but never did; at times that noise seemed the most real thing about my home that summer.

Gatsby’s gardens were golden in summer as I walked past his driveway. Summer had made even his monstrous mansion beautiful, but it had made Gatsby gorgeous. He stood untouched among a bustle of servants carrying menacing nailed-up crates about like ants, and glowed with some eternal happy secret. The flow of people never touched him but they followed some guidance of his, some influence of his heightened mind directing them wordlessly. I watched him behind the explosion of rosebushes for a while until eventually he noticed me and I had to go. He raised his hand in greeting and smiled that smile of his. I waved back. I longed to join him and spend the day gadding about in a daze of hydroplanes and swimming pools and garden parties instead of confronting a blackmailer and sordid consequences.

We turned our separate ways.

Mr McKee and I had chosen Mother Child’s cafeteria to do battle. The train ride into New York had never felt longer than it did that day, nor the compartment as cramped. I usually kept myself to myself on the train, never completely friendly with my fellow commuters but never completely withdrawn; I found myself to be avoiding everyone’s eyes, even the conductor as he palmed my ticket. I feared my intent was etched into my face and fully expected the cheerful woman sitting next to me would see something in my eyes and denounce me before God, our fellow passengers, and Dr Eckleberg. As she settled down in her seat, her coat brushed mine. After that, I spent the rest of the journey bolt upright, eyes trained fixedly on my feet with my heart in my mouth. The entire Valley of Ashes could have risen up in arms singing the _Internationale_ and I wouldn’t have noticed.

I moved like an automaton, leaving the station and setting off. I hardly registered surroundings until I had already reached the corner of Central Park. I stopped to rally myself and the tide of people parted around me, ignoring inner turmoil in favour of just how inconvenient it was to alter their course by fraction. So, feeling a little like an explorer myself, I crossed Columbus Circle…

Inside the cafeteria the light from the wrought glass roof and the tall windows facing the street made the tiles and palms and tables hazy and dream-like. It was a haven of quiet after the New York streets. Couples and groups sat around round tables, bright and content with their coffee and companionship. A peroxide blond youth passed me to the door and smirked at me. He had soft red lips and champagne eyes. The look he gave me told me he thought he knew exactly why I was here. I flushed and turned away as he brushed past - we had forgotten Mother Child’s reputation.

But I stood at a loss; McKee wasn’t there. I felt a fool and didn’t know whether to be indignant with him or relieved – perhaps I would have known if I hadn’t been so ashamed. And suddenly he appeared and lead me to the food counter. The subway had kept him at home for longer than he expected. I wondered to myself if the subway had been asking too many questions about where he was going.

We chose our food in silence, then sat down in silence. I pushed a slice of bread around my plate in silence. McKee kept clenching and unclenching his fork so forcefully that his knuckles turned white. My throat had turned to sandpaper, making the bread painful to swallow. He slammed his fork down suddenly.

I looked up. Our eyes met for the first time.

“See here, Mr Carraway, I won’t be made a criminal example of,” he burst out, “ _you_ won’t drag me before any vice court,” he was gesturing with the fork now, jabbing it like a dagger. “You may have the money to bring a charge against me, but you’re not a married man and you don’t know…you don’t know _people_ in the city like I do. I will not be blackmailed.”

“ _You_ will not be blackmailed? I came here expecting you to blackmail _me_!” I hissed, “If I have the money to bring charges, then of course you want me to buy your silence.”

McKee put the fork down again. His face was flushed, his eyes glittered madly, and strands of his hair had flopped over his forehead. I held my hands still by my plate to myself from reaching out to brush them back.

“After all, you rang me, not the other way ‘round.” Realising I sounded like a petulant child, I dropped my eyes to the tablecloth. He looked away, his eyes wandering sightlessly, till they lighted on a young couple, clearly playing hooky to feed each other mousses and childish affections. The fear that drove me here faded away by degrees and something warm and heavy dripped into my insides to take its place. For a few seconds we sat in silence. The cafeteria life continued around us.

“I wanted to see you again, I couldn’t think how else to…,” he drifted off as the young girl’s laughter rang out across the room, “I didn’t think you’d want to see me.”

I thought of the one hundred and twenty-seven photographs of Mrs McKee and that dim ectoplasm enlargement on the apartment wall and shook my head. “I didn’t think you’d want to think of it again. Your wife, is she…” He shook his head violently, “okay then.”

The table descended into silence again. I had to say something, had to do something, or I’d burst and grab Mr McKee right then and there.  

“It’s odd to see you without the others, Mr McKee,” I said.

“Oh, call me Chester, _please_.”

“In that case, it’s Nick,” I replied, picking at the tablecloth. It’s unlike me to fidget, but my skin prickled and buzzed under my shirt. Everything was too tight. McKee looked at me myopically, a little looser-limbed without the Damocles blade of the criminal courts hanging over us, but still as fastidiously polite. He rested his chin on his hands, perhaps imaging how he would frame me, how he would set the light and background to capture my blurry likeness. Perhaps he thought it made him look artistic; I thought it made him look short-sighted.

We exchanged pleasantries. We drank our drinks. Our ankles brushed – he jolted, I jumped – I had to look away. Droplets of his coffee collected at the corners of his mouth and he licked his lips. I followed his mouth as he spoke but comprehended nothing. Neither of us were quite sure how to proceed now we had abandoned the clear-cut roles of aggressor and defender.

I had ordered a lemon soda and to relieve my embarrassment I opened it. But as the cap burst off, I fumbled the bottle. It slipped, soda foamed over my hand and in between my fingers. McKee moved quickly to grab my wrist and righted it. He didn’t remove his hand. The moment stilled and condensed into small points of focus, like the sticky soda underneath my fingers, and now his fingers felt around mine. He could surely feel my hammering pulse under his hands.

“Come with me,” I said, unable to look away from my hand wrapped around the bottle and Chester’s hand wrapped around mine.  

I don’t where I found the courage from, perhaps between my meeting Tom’s woman and the insurmountable remoteness of Gatsby, I wanted to taste something tangible, something flesh and blood. I pushed open the door to the cafeteria, a little apprehensive and berating myself for even considering this foolishness but I had gotten myself this far, much farther than I could have dreamed in my New Haven days. Chester followed.

The sunlight filtered through the green awning onto bright hanging baskets and hot metal tables as we loitered on the sidewalk for a cab. Chester reached out, touched my arm, and asked, “Where are we going?”

“No goddamn clue.”

He laughed suddenly, like it had been shocked out of him, and some of his nervous tension bled out.

“I could do a study of this, couldn’t I,” he said, ‘Columbus Circle – Cafeteria’ or… ‘Young Men – Columbus Circle’. This light’s perfect.”

I was squinting and, outside of the shade, objects and colours seemed bleached out by the fierce sun – but I nodded.

Chester hailed a cab and gave the address of a street downtown. We sat in silence, stiff and straight-backed, keeping a gulf of space between us. The taxi driver had slammed the partition firmly shut and the windows had jammed shut, trapping us in a fug of cheap leather and sweat. The forests of New York passed us by until we turned into a dim street lined with warehouses. Tucked between a chapel and a shoemaker’s warehouse, was a pokey, unwashed townhouse. It was set back from the street by a tiny yard full of straggling bushes and seemed to be occupied and yet unlived in; the eyeless windows were shuttered, blank and unassuming. The hallway was dim and cool, and we walked through clouds of lazy dust motes caught in the murky light from the dusty glass in the door.

Chester lead me up the narrow stairs, twisting and turning until we gained an uncarpeted landing. We faced off outside of a whitewashed door. He wet his lips and I stepped forward to cup his face; he gave the barest nod and I kissed him. It was only a chaste brush of lips, but he gasped and grabbed a fistful of my shirt. Frantically, he pushed the door open behind us and pulled me in. We were in a low attic room, which I saw little of as Chester pushed me against the door, gaining confidence, but not so much finesse, safe from prying eyes. I worked a hand up his shirt and then down to grasp his hip, making my way further and further down. He panted against my lips, then pulled me over to the low iron bedstead. It was a rusted old thing and protested loudly to all that we put it through that afternoon.

I spent a good five minutes brushing plaster out of my hair before I dressed and left a drowsy Chester satiated on the covers.

Passing back through the Valley of Ashes with a second meeting arranged for a bar in Harlem, I had a sudden image of John Sumner and the vice squad chasing after my train car like black crows of the Inquisition. I laughed out loud, startling my innocent fellow passengers, and Dr Eckleburg’s great blue eyes winked at me as we passed.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The last time I saw Chester was at one of Gatsby’s parties. I have forgotten exactly when in the rushed affair of that summer it happened but I know that the champagne music hadn’t yet fallen flat, the flowers hadn’t yet faded, the cocktails hadn’t yet soured; Gatsby was still a fantastical Trimalchio.

Jordan was nowhere to be seen. In fact, it was more unusual if we managed to stay by each other’s side in the melee. I was happy to melt into the background, safe in the knowledge that out of all these gaudy guests, Gatsby had chosen to trust me. Once he caught my eye across the swirling sea of dancers and I nodded to him. I’m not sure what I meant by it, only that if either of us wished for the other, he would appear by his side.

The stars above bubbled over with laughter…the orchestra swelled with a thousand different feelings a minute…I danced with a thousand tinkling spirits…

Eventually the tide of the Charleston took me up the marble spiral staircase. By now, my cheeks were hot with midsummer moonshine but the iron rail under my hand was icy. Strange, for everyone ascending and descending this Jacob’s Ladder seemed to run their damp palms over it...

A group of raucous young men stood leaning in the corner, sprawling over much of the stairs, and there, arm slung around one of jazz players, was Chester. He was flushed and loose, throwing his head back and laughing at nothing – I hardly recognised him. His wedding ring was conspicuously absent. He didn’t see me as I slunk past, his attention was solely on his handsome friend, but one of the others did. It was a sharp faced blonde whose calculating eyes followed my path. I half remembered his face, but before I could place it, I saw Gatsby on the balcony and all other thoughts flew from me as I went to join him, silhouetted in the night sky.


End file.
